10 iPhone Apps That Have Been Banned

During the second quarter of 2011 Apple announced that their App Store had reached the staggering benchmark number of 15 billion-downloaded songs obtained from the iTunes Store. With more than 425,000 apps currently available in the iTunes market for purchase or download, it can be easy to overlook the scores of programs that don’t make the final cut and are pulled after an initial approval or even just outright rejected by the mobile technology giants. Here are 10 of the more notorious apps that have been yanked after release, or banned from the before even reaching fruition.

1. Jew or Not Jew? – The Jew or Not Jew? application created quite a controversy because it allowed users to access a database full of public figures and celebrities to determine whether or not they were of Jewish descent. After an anti-racism group in France threatened Apple with litigation this app was quickly removed from the app store.
2. Exodus International – Claiming to cure homosexuality and promoting the “ex-gay” movement, the application came under fire from human rights groups that eventually succeeded in having the App removed. Removal didn’t come easily though, and it required an online petition signed by more than 150,000 people before Apple finally relented to public outrage and removed the Exodus International App from the iTunes store.
3. Baby Shaker – Every new parent and teenage babysitter knows that shaking a baby is terribly dangerous; App creators took this concept to an entirely new level with the introduction of the Baby Shaker App. The application featured a drawing of an infant accompanied by the sounds of a wailing child; players were then instructed to shake their iPhones as violently as possible, until two red “x” marks covered the infant’s eyes. The fictional infant’s crying may have ceased at this point, but the cries from child protection groups didn’t stop until Apple pulled the program.
4. Dirty Fingers – Feminist groups decried the Dirty Fingers application, which features a bikini clad girl scrubbing the screen each time the user touches it. The download page touted that “Amber teleports in to clean up after you — you dirty boy!” Though Apple made the decision to ban the app, the Android store still carries it.
5. Phone Story – By now, the less-than-ideal working conditions of those who manufacture Apple products is no secret. When developers introduced the Phone Story program, which depicted the child labor, environmental damage and unsafe factories that Apple utilizes, it was banned within hours.
6. Freedom Time – As the end of former president George W. Bush’s term drew closer, app-makers introduced a program that turned a cartoonish Dubya into a clock that counted down his remaining time in office. Steve Jobs is reported to have personally put the kibosh on the app, stating that it would be “offensive to roughly half of our customers.”
7. Zombie School – The zombie craze has certainly reached a fever pitch; when app-makers created a program in which a zombie virus infects a school, critics immediately worried that the game would glorify school shootings. Upon review, Apple agreed with these observations and promptly pulled the app from their store.
8. Drivetrain – Though this torrent managing program didn’t actually download anything to the iPhone, it did allow users to remotely track the downloads of their computer torrent programs. Due to the association with illegal downloading and copyright infringement, something that Apple is strictly against, Apple chose to ban the app.
9. PinPointsX – The Craigslist Casual Encounters set was the target of this application, which allowed users to post ads on a GPS-enabled map for others to locate in order to facilitate no-strings-attached sexual encounters. However Apple pulled the program from their App Store due to rising concerns that the app could be used for the promotion of sex trafficking.
10. Strip Simon – Most adults have fond (or frustrated!) memories of Milton Bradley’s memorization game Simon. Developers used this classic memory game as the basis for their naughty app, which rewarded users with photographs of women in varying stages of undress for memorizing and recreating sets of color sequences. Because it violated Apple’s strict policy against sexual content, the program was banned.

Taken From Wireless Internet Interview